Lighten Up

This was the most finished piece I turned out during a recent workshop with illustrator Omar Rayyan.  He is a phenomenal watercolorist, he paints dozens of unique animal characters in narrative scenes wonderfully, and puts his own twist on the Northern Renaissance and Symbolist painters he's inspired by.  His shtick is building a painting up from extremely light initial layers to a progressively more saturated and detailed finish.

That was also my most valuable takeaway from the workshop.  Lighten up.  Water your paints down (way, way, way down) and go in with a couple exploratory layers.  Not every painting needs multiple preparatory sketches and a pencil underdrawing.  I found it particularly freeing to simply start in with a few shapes, and coax something out of that.  And since it's watercolor (and so light) it's a lot easier to scrub out mistakes you make.

If you want to know more about Omar and TLC Workshop, you can see Omar's work here and read up on the workshops here.